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The Yellow Wallpaper Analysis Essay

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The Yellow Wallpaper Charlotte Perkins Gilman, author of, “The Yellow Wallpaper,” writes about her descent into madness. Charlotte was a strong female role model throughout her life, believing that women should not be subjected to a stereotypical housewife. Charlotte dedicated her life to liberate women from the masculine world of their time. However, before she could make any changes in the lives of other women, she must go through her own changes. After marrying Charles Stetson she began the role as housewife and nine months later gave birth to their daughter Katherine. Now, as a housewife she began to be torn between the life she had and the life she wanted. Charlotte spiraled into postpartum depression and began treatment with S. Weir Mitchell. She later wrote an exposition about the struggles she went through as his patient. …show more content…

Jane is forced to be isolated in a rental home for the summer. There she will undergo a treatment that will only cause her more anguish. John believes that his method of treatment called the “rest cure” will help his wife with her depression. The “rest cure” was a treatment to help women who were having problems with hysteria and depression. However, Jane is not convinced that her husband’s treatment will help her. The story produces strong imagery for the reader. Jane repetitively talks about the yellow wallpaper in the room and how she personifies it as faces of women behind the paper moving and creeping around the room. The women are representations of how the female role was treated at that time. Women in the 1890’s had little say in the matters of the male dominated world. Women especially in the middle-class had strict obligations they needed to follow such as, marrying a man and raising a family while the husband provided the income. Anything shy of these obligations was dismissed and ridiculed in the eyes of

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Since her husband, a physician of high standard, has prescribed a "rest cure" for her nervous condition, the protagonist is forced to suppress her creative urges and conform to societal expectations of a submissive and passive wife who is to remain still in a room with “the yellow wallpaper.” This suppression ultimately leads to her descent into madness as she struggles to reconcile her own desires with the expectations placed upon her. While the lady narrates the entire story, it is interesting to note that she is not in control of her own life and decisions. Rather, she is a victim of societal norms and gender roles that restrict her agency and

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In the story of “The Yellow Wallpaper”, dramatically changes for Janes behavior has been shown towards the end of the story. On the last night, her husband has once again going in town for attending to a patient, and Jane asks Jennie not to disturb her. As no one know notice Jane, she locks herself in the nursery to allow uninterrupted time for peeling wallpaper and thus freeing the shadowy woman. As Jane was tearing off the paper, she knows that she is closer to be woman who is behind the wall, until the point she loses her sense of personal identity and merges with the woman behind the wallpaper. When the time her husband breaks through the door to find out his wife was crawling amid the torn paper, and proclaiming that the woman behind

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During the mid to late eighteen hundred women were considered second class citizens that were refined to the interest of the home and family. Women were not able or encouraged to pursue careers, education, or liberty at this time. Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Charlotte Bronte were aspiring feminist writers of this period who broke down worldly standards and helped to spread the news of and encourage the women's rights movement, which began to take the world by storm. Both Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre and Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper,” utilize imagery, symbolism, and personification to sanction uprising ideologies of the freedom and empowerment of women in the mid to late 17th century that challenge the traditional classist

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For the time period, in which the story takes place, a male-controlled marriage was normal. Jane stated, “John laughs at me, of course, but one expects that in marriage.” (Gilman) from the statement the reader can deduce the fact, that unequal balance between male and female in marriage was common. Throughout the story of Jane being neglected and belittled, leads to her losing her mind at the end go the story. Jane imagines that a woman is in the wallpaper to hide her problems.

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The rest-cure was a treatment that was well known in the 19th century. Mostly women were the ones who were treated with the rest-cure. The narrator had to be on bed rest for a long period of time because her husband thought it was the best way to regain her health. He has forbidden her to do anything active and he didn’t even want her to write even though she told him that it was helping her to gain her health back. Her husband thinks he is helping her

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The Yellow Wallpaper was written by a woman named Charlotte Perkins Gilman, who during the late 1800’s to early 1900’s was a famous writer and strived to change social standards for women through her writing. She started writing after having left her husband after suffering from a nervous breakdown and needing a job to support herself after she moved to California in 1890. Her experiences with having to support herself as single women in a society that repressed women’s rights are what drove her to write some of her most famous books and short stories. She wrote The Yellow wallpaper and Women and Economics which dealt with teaching the public about women’s health issues and financial independence are just some of the many short stories and books she wrote to help bring social awareness to women’s oppression from society's standards. She used her own life as her inspiration

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